Constructing Orthodoxy

• In Event: Orthodoxy, Invention, and Appropriation in 17th- and 18th-Century Nôm Texts

Abstract

As in Korean and Japanese, the pronunciation of Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese often follows an orthodox pattern, associated with cultural prestige. Although widely recognized as systematic, the manner in which these “Hán-Việt” pronunciations attained their orthodoxy has not yet been satisfactorily explained. This process is uniquely illuminated by a 17th century Sino-Vietnamese encyclopedic dictionary, entitled Explication of the Guide to Jeweled Sounds 指南玉音解義 (Viet. Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa). The dictionary, completed by a Lê Empress and printed in a Buddhist temple (as opposed to the male-dominated, Confucianized court), comprises semantic definitions written in Chữ Nôm for various abstruse Chinese terms, some of which include an additional gloss dictating pronunciation. These phonetic glosses represent the earliest guide to pronouncing Chinese words extant in the tradition, and their analysis quickly reveals that Chinese rime books 韻書 and rime tables 韻圖 play little to no role in determining pronunciations, as has often been speculated. Rather, the composition of Hán-Việt pronunciations involved an ongoing negotiation between a received phonology, originally sourced in a Chinese dialect native to northern Vietnam, and a contemporary Vietnamese “accent.” This paper presents a systematic analysis of the phonetic glosses of the Explication of the Guide to Jeweled Sounds, and demonstrates how the vestiges of a native dialect of Middle Chinese ultimately informed the basis for what we now call “Hán-Việt.”

Author

• John Duong Phan, Rutgers University